Paul Wolfowitz, a deputy defense
secretary, was the brain behind the U.S.
preemptive strategy that shaped the current campaign to oust Saddam Hussein.

He belonged to a group that called themselves "neo-Reaganites" who were very unhappy about the way the
first gulf war was ended. He believed that U.S.
should talk loudly and carry a big stick and use it before weapons of mass
destruction could be used. And if U.S.
had to act alone, so be it.

Wolfowitz wrote them down in a
top-secret draft (1992). Inside Pentagon, people thought this thing was nuts,
and leaked to The New York Times for public debate. The document outlined seven
scenarios in potential trouble spots. The primary case studies were Iraq
and North Korea.

To dim the controversy, defense Secretary Cheney has to
rewrite Wolfowitz's draft by reiterated the nation's
reliance on containment and coalitions before taking action. When George Bush
senior left office, Wolfowitz's draft plan went into
the bottom drawer until the event of September Eleven (9/11/2001).

And the rest is history ...

1992: FIRST DRAFT OF A GRAND STRATEGY

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
has been at the center of Pentagon strategic planning in both Bush
administrations.

A hawk on the use of U.S.
military power, Wolfowitz took the lead in drafting
the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance on America's
military posture toward the world.

The draft said that CONTAINMENT was an old idea, a relic of
the cold war. It advocated that America
should maintain military strength beyond challenge and use it to PREEMPT
provocations from rogue states with weapons of mass destruction.

And it stated that, if necessary, the U.S.
should be prepared to act alone. Leaked to the press, Wolfowitz's
draft was rewritten and softened by then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.

Ten years later, many analysts see a strong resemblance
between President Bush's 2002 National Security Strategy and Wolfowitz's 1992 draft.

2002: THE BUSH DOCTRINE

Released Sept. 17,
2002, twenty months after President Bush took office, the 33-page
"National Security Strategy of the United
States" (NSS) offers the
administration's first comprehensive rationale for a new, aggressive approach
to national security.

The new strategy calls for PRE-EMPTIVE action against
hostile states and terror groups, and it states that the U.S.
"will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of
self-defense by acting pre-emptively."

The NSS also focuses on how diplomacy and foreign aid can
and should be used to project American values, including "a battle for the
future of the Muslim world."

Sources: Barton Gellman of The Washington Post; Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard; historian John Lewis Gaddis
of Yale; and Dennis Ross, former State Department official and Mideast envoy.